Pages

Monday, August 3, 2015

Smek for President by Adam Rex, 2015

Click to view
on Goodreads

In this much anticipated sequel to The True Meaning of Smekday, Tip and J.Lo are back for another hilarious intergalactic adventure. And this time (and last time, and maybe next time), they want to make things right with the Boov.
After Tip and J.Lo banished the Gorg from Earth in a scheme involving the cloning of many, many cats, the pair is notorious-but not for their heroics. Instead, human Dan Landry has taken credit for conquering the Gorg, and the Boov blame J.Lo for ruining their colonization of the planet. Determined to clear his name, J.Lo and Tip pack into Slushious, a Chevy that J.Lo has engineered into a fairly operational spaceship, and head to New Boovworld, the aliens' new home on one of Saturn's moons.
But their welcome isn't quite as warm as Tip and J.Lo would have liked. J.Lo is dubbed Public Enemy Number One, and Captain Smek knows that capturing the alien is the only way he'll stand a chance in the Boovs' first-ever presidential election.
With the help of a friendly flying billboard named Bill, a journey through various garbage chutes, a bit of time travel, and a slew of hilarious Boovish accents, Tip and J.Lo must fight to set the record straight-and return home in once piece.

(272 pages)
This wasn't as good as the first book, featuring a lot more fluff and a lot less message, but I still enjoyed it. Tip is a bit more angsty this time around, but that doesn't take over the plot too much. It was a lot of fun seeing the Boov in their "native" habitat (as it were), and meet more than just J.Lo.

The Boov are simply hilarious, even when they're being serious, and I loved seeing how they lived (in these house/bubble things), communicated with each other (an argument over whether J.Lo will eat the Koobish "now or later" is particularly memorable), and ran their government (I'm pretty sure I couldn't just walk into Obama's reception room and ask for an appointment in the oval office!). The slightly stale feel to the second book doesn't really have too large an effect on the excitement level, and I was still gripped all the way through. It's just that after I put it down, I didn't feel like I had gleaned much from it - except maybe a lesson about mother-daughter relationships, and that honestly felt a little forced.

There's not much more I can say about the book, because it was really just a goofy romp through Smekday. Tip was, as I said above, as awesome a narrator as ever except for when she was getting a little angsty about her mom, J.Lo was still absolutely amazing, and the new characters introduced in this book were pretty awesome as well (although Smek was only awesome as in "awesomely, hilariously bad - in every sense of the word"). Also, the ending made like no sense but it's fine. I'm cool with that. What more could I expect from a universe where there's such a thing as Koobish, edible pets?

So yeah. If you've read the first book, by all means grab a copy of Smek for President. It won't blow your socks off the way The True Meaning of Smekday did, but it sure will make you laugh.